Show & Tell/ How It's Made

Show & Tell/ How It's Made

Our first assignment for Materials and Processes was to select an object of our choice and research how it was made from a raw material into a finished product. I chose to research the standard pencil because it's a tool that pretty much everyone uses and needs but I had yet to know how exactly it came to be made. As you already know, pencils are primarily used for writing and drawing. 

There are hundreds of companies that manufacture pencils worldwide but one of the biggest in the United States currently is Dixon. Pencils are constructed using cedar wood, graphite, glue to hold the graphite, synthetic rubber, aluminum to hold the eraser, paint and sometimes foil stamps. 

It was interesting to discover that pencils originally start as large blocks of cedar. They are then sliced accordingly to create a sheet divided into ten square pencils. these divided sections have been cut in half, filled with graphite and then glued back together. They are then shaped into the form we know and use. The next step is attaching the rubber eraser, painting the wood and finally stamping the side with foil lettering. After watching this entire process, I realized how effect the steps were for mass producing such a product.